Would anyone who deals a lot with this era of Cub have a guess what percentage or number of these would have been gear driven and ordered with a creeper? I picked up a fairly nice 1200 with creeper and headlights. I am not that sharp on Cubs, but I wanted a gear driven cub with the creeper package and this is the first time I have seen one with this set up for sale in my area. It looks to have had some restoration work done, but the serial numbers all match up to 1978. I don't have pics right now, but any input would help me in deciding my direction with it.

Would anyone who deals a lot with this era of Cub have a guess what percentage or number of these would have been gear driven and ordered with a creeper? I picked up a fairly nice 1200 with creeper and headlights. I am not that sharp on Cubs, but I wanted a gear driven cub with the creeper package and this is the first time I have seen one with this set up for sale in my area. It looks to have had some restoration work done, but the serial numbers all match up to 1978. I don't have pics right now, but any input would help me in deciding my direction with it.

Thanks in advance

Tim

Well that is a tough question to answer because you have to account for those people that might have ordered the creeper with the tractor, dealers that ordered the tractor with the creeper, people who bought the creeper from the dealer or from another person and installed it themselves or had the dealer install it, so the actual number would be hard to say, because theoretically most if not all could have creepers on them. As you probably know Cub did not even designated how many of each QL tractors were made, but instead gave each tractor rolling off the assembly line the next number whether it was a 800, 1000, 1200, 1250, 1450, or 1650. I didn't mention the 1100 because I wasn't sure it came off the same line or was tagged in the QL series. you have know way of knowing which category your tractor falls into the above situations, but the 1200, 1000, and 800 were the only kohler powered gear driven Cubs and the 800 was only made one year, under 2500 units. that said someone might be able to answer fairly easily how many QLs were made and you could start from there to form a completely wild guesstamation, but with the total number plus years made and number of models you could establish a mean and a mode and come up with a standard error or devation that could fall into the 65 percentile, maybe better.

I had noticed that there was no obvious production numbers between models and little to tell from overall serial number ranges. I thought maybe there was some insider guesses. Around where I live, it seems all the gear driven models have been turned into pullers, or are sought to be pullers. Now that I think about it, maybe my thought was wrong and there were quite a few built, but they have disappeared more than the hydros due to the demand for pullers. I have a small herd of garden/super garden tractors, and somehow my mind told me this is a must have member of the pack.

I had noticed that there was no obvious production numbers between models and little to tell from overall serial number ranges. I thought maybe there was some insider guesses. Around where I live, it seems all the gear driven models have been turned into pullers, or are sought to be pullers. Now that I think about it, maybe my thought was wrong and there were quite a few built, but they have disappeared more than the hydros due to the demand for pullers. I have a small herd of garden/super garden tractors, and somehow my mind told me this is a must have member of the pack.

They made over 1 million cub cadet garden tractors from 1961 to 1984, a little over 20 years, the only reason they are rare is that people either didn't take care of them, mostly second/third owners or people turned them into pullers and scrapped them when they were finished with them. When you build an engine that can blow a cub rear end and wind itself up so high it turns cast iron into slivers there isn't much left but scrap, I think hunting people would be a neat sport, others don't agree, lol, Seriously though, I doubt there were that many no matter how they became to have creepers, maybe a few thousand. While that seems like a lot like you said they have disappeared due to...... oh heck, I'm just digging myself into a hole and making people mad at me because we should have a reduced opinion in all forums in order to please everyone and make everyone happy, now I feel better, forget all that stuff I said before, I don't know where that came from, probably heard it on another forum and it was all lies.

Don't know about production amounts, but the current cost for Cub creepers would seem to indicate that they are getting rarer all the time. I would think anybody that ordered up a snow blower or tiller on a new Cub would have wanted a creeper. If not on their first Cub certainly on the second one after trying the above tools without one. Then came the Hydro, so your 1200 maybe is rarer because the "slow movement" market had other options, only a "gear only" guy would have a need for the creeper. Just some ramblings.